Richard Holland or Richard de Holande (died in or after 1483) was a

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

cleric and poet, author of the '' Buke of the Howlat''.

Life

Holland was secretary or

chaplain A chaplain is, traditionally, a cleric (such as a minister, priest, pastor, rabbi, purohit, or imam), or a lay representative of a religious tradition, attached to a secular institution (such as a hospital, prison, military unit, intellige ...

Archibald Douglas, Earl of Moray Archibald Douglas, Earl of Moray (1426 – 1 May 1455) was a Scottish nobleman during the reign of King James II of Scotland. He was one of the five brothers from the Black Douglas family who clashed with the king. Life Douglas was the son ...

(c. 1450) and rector of

Halkirk Halkirk () is a village on the River Thurso in Caithness, in the Highland council area of Scotland. From Halkirk the B874 road runs towards Thurso in the north and towards Georgemas in the east. The village is within the parish of Halkirk, a ...

, near

Thurso Thurso (pronounced ; , ) is a town and former burgh on the north coast of the Highland council area of Scotland. Situated in the historical County of Caithness, it is the northernmost town on the island of Great Britain. From a latitudinal s ...

. He was afterwards rector of Abbreochy,

Loch Ness Loch Ness (; ) is a large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands. It takes its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. Loch Ness is best known for claimed sightings of the cryptozoology, cryptozoological Loch Ness Mons ...

, and later held a chantry in the cathedral of Norway. He was an ardent partisan of the Douglases, and on their over-throw retired to Orkney and later to

Shetland Shetland (until 1975 spelled Zetland), also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands, and Norway, marking the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the ...

. He was employed by

Edward IV Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England ...

in his attempt to rouse the Western Isles through Douglas agency, and in 1482 was excluded from the general pardon granted by James III to those who would renounce their fealty to the Douglases.

Works

The poem entitled the Buke of the Howlat, written about 1450, shows Holland's devotion to the house of Douglas: "On ilk beugh till embrace Writtin in a bill was O Dowglass, O Dowglass Tender and trewe!" (ii. 400–403). and is dedicated to the wife of a Douglas "Thus for ane Dow of Dunbar drew I this Dyte, Dowit with ane Dowglass, and boith war thei dowis." But all theories of its being a political

allegory As a List of narrative techniques, literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a wikt:narrative, narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political signi ...

in favour of that house may be discarded.

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

's judgment that the Buke is "a poetical apologue ... without any view whatever to local or natural politics" is certainly the most reasonable. The poem, which extends to fool lines written in the irregular

alliterative Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a List of narrative techniques#Style, litera ...

rhymed

stanza In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...

, is a bird-allegory, of the type familiar in the ''Parlemsnt of Foules''. It has the incidental interest of showing (especially in stanzas 62 and 63) the antipathy of the "Inglis-speaking Scot" to the "Scots-speaking Gael" of the west, as is also shown in

Dunbar Dunbar () is a town on the North Sea coast in East Lothian in the south-east of Scotland, approximately east of Edinburgh and from the Anglo–Scottish border, English border north of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Dunbar is a former royal burgh, and ...

's ''Flyting with Kennedy''. The text of the poem is preserved in the Asloan (c. 1515) and Bannatyne (1568) manuscripts, though the poem is thought to be 50–70 years older than the earlier manuscript. Fragments of an early 16th-century black-letter edition, discovered by D. Laing, are reproduced in the ''Adversaria'' of the Bannatyne Club. The poem has been frequently reprinted, by * Richard Holland, Bangor, 1989 *

John Pinkerton John Pinkerton (17 February 1758 – 10 March 1826) was a Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist, historian, and early advocate of Germanic peoples, Germanic Supremacism, racial supremacy theory. He was born in Edinburg ...

, in his ''Scottish Poems'' (1792) * David Laing (Bannatyne Club 1823) * in "New Club" series, Paisley, 1882) * the Hunterian Club in their edition of the Bannatyne Manuscript * A. Diebler (Chemnitz, 1893) * F. J. Amours in ''Scottish Alliterative Poems'' (Scottish Text Society, 1897), pp. 47–81. (See also Introduction pp. xx.-xxxiv.)

References

* * ''British Authors Before 1800: A Biographical Dictionary'', edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, New York, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1952.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Holland, Richard 15th-century deaths Scots Makars People associated with Orkney People associated with Shetland Shetland writers Scottish Renaissance writers Year of birth unknown 15th-century Scottish writers 15th-century Scottish poets Early Scots poets Middle Scots poets 15th-century Scottish Roman Catholic priests